Brian Walton's news and commentary on the St. Louis Cardinals (TM) and their minor league system

Cardinals low run-scoring streak continues

The St. Louis Cardinals have scored two or fewer runs in four consecutive games – again.

Tony La Russa managed his first game with the St. Louis Cardinals on April 1, 1996. In the almost 15 years that followed, his clubs had only 11 prior stretches as bleak as the active one in terms of scoring.

Currently, the Cardinals have scored two or fewer runs in four consecutive games. That hadn’t happened in over two years, since July 2008.

Seven of La Russa’s teams’ 12 four-or-more game offensive futility streaks occurred during his first three seasons with the organization, 1996-98.

Another two-run or less outing on Friday by the 2010 Cardinals would tie La Russa’s teams’ longest streak at five games, set in 1996 and tied twice the next year.

On the other end of the spectrum, during the heyday of the MV3 and after, the Cardinals went almost five years (August 2002 until May 2007) without four consecutive low-scoring games as this week.

Going back to 1920, the longest consecutive game stretch was 11 games in May 1978. In an interesting bit of symmetry, the current streak is the 91st occurrence in the last 91 years for the Cardinals.

Thanks to researcher Tom Orf, here are the dozen during the La Russa years.

Cardinals streaks of four or more games, scoring two or fewer runs per game: 1996 – current